GPA Basks in Superb Year 2006

04/20/07

By Strother Blair
TBR Staff

The Georgia Ports Authority had a banner year in 2006.

It was a very good year for the Georgia Ports Authority and its crown jewel, the Port of Savannah.

With a 15.9 percent increase in Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) over the last fiscal year, Savannah - home of the country's fourth-largest container port - saw a record-breaking 2,041,789 TEUs move through its facility in 2006. The port attracted three new services: AWE5, Asia-EC and NEC/NEX, while also signing a 20-year agreement with one of the world's largest shipping lines, the Danish company Maersk. And Container Berth 8 (CB-8) went online at the port's western end, adding another parking spot for visiting ships. Construction on the more western CB-9 should be complete by April.

When both are functioning, the Port of Savannah will have the longest contiguous container dock down the East Coast - a 9,693-foot-long stretch of functional waterfront.

Last Wednesday, Robert Morris, GPA's director of external affairs, took the time to drive around and show what a good year looks like at the authority's Garden City terminal.

That morning, a crane happened to be loading 1,000 TEUs onto the Mediterranean Shipping Company's Ela. Arriving from New York, Ela docked at the port on Jan. 2 and departed the next day for Freeport, Bahamas.

The sight of Mediterranean ships has become increasingly common on the Savannah River. Unlike other U.S. East Coast ports, where business with the Mediterranean has stalled or slackened, Savannah's has increased. In 2005, the port's trade with that region jumped 30 percent. In the past three years, Savannah has added Amerigo, AMAX and Turkon services to the Mediterranean. The added lines are helping grow the port, but smart technology is also making the 1,200-acre port feel a bit roomier.

Up and down the open-air aisles of the terminal, steel containers the size of train boxcars and painted brightly like children's toy blocks sit in orderly stacks and rows. But the aisles between them have been shrinking. These days the port is moving away from bulky top lifts, the traditional cranes used to transport and stack these containers, and increasingly taking advantage of the newer rubber-tired gantries, or RTGs - a narrower lifting device that needs less space to work, allowing logistics specialists to stack containers more closely together.?

Morris noted that using the space-saving RTGs, combined with other efficiencies, will nearly triple the number of TEUs the port can hold in the next few years. Right now, the Port of Savannah's maximum capacity is 2.5 million TEUs, but that number will soon jump to 6 million.

"I would dare say there are very few ports that could triple their capacity like that," said Morris.

Additional space will soon be a necessity as the port continues to open up new geographic markets and local companies find ways to exploit new product markets. For example, Georgia, the nation's largest chicken farmer, makes the Port of Savannah a major player in the poultry game, but apparently, it's not just wings and drumsticks people are craving anymore. China and Chinatowns across the United States are crazy for dish called spiced chicken claws.

According to Morris, this has opened a whole new use for the birds' feet, which were previously discarded as waste, and, consequently, the refrigerated container and the cold-storage business are doing better than ever at the port.

When Flint River Services recently opened a 250,000-square-foot cold-storage warehouse in nearby Effingham County, takers swarmed. "It literally filled up overnight," said Morris. The warehouse expects to ship 3,000 TEUs of poultry to China this year - a large percentage of them will be chicken claws.

As the port grows, so do the companies and communities that service it. Local intermodal rail business carrying cargo has grown 23.1 percent in the past year. And while transporting dry bulk, breakbulk and liquid bulk cargo are all lucrative in their own rights, Morris observed that Savannah benefits particularly from having port specializing in containers. Managing the logistics of a container-heavy port is a labor-intensive task, mandating a large work force that, in turn, creates the greatest possible ripple effect on the local economy.

"(Containers) are the dominant piece of the industry," said Morris of the shipping business. "If this were liquid bulk, dry bulk or even an automotive port, we wouldn't have 6,000 people coming off the port every day."

Morris said much of the port's success can be attributed to its relatively unique owner-operator model. Most authorities lease out their waterfronts to private companies. "But we think our model is better," said Morris.

By closely managing and developing its property, Marchand and the GPA have been able to attract not just new shipping lines and expanded services but major distribution centers. "The two are so incredibly linked," said Morris. "We're not just interested in bringing in ship lines. We also consider the customer, the retailer, and attracting beneficial cargo."

This year has seen the rapid construction of Target and Ikea's enormous distribution centers at the GPA's Savannah River International Trade Park just four miles up the road from the port.?

When built out, Target and Ikea's total facilities will total four million square feet. Morris said that the park has room for at least four or five more additional mega-facilities such as these.

Looking over a great, paved expanse where rows of glittering new Target panel trucks sat parked outside of the new distribution center, Morris asked, "Now isn't that beautiful?"